Ask A Sound Guy

Abletonlife.com is a great little site. If you’re into Ableton Live in any of its forms, be sure to check it out. But for now, just check out this great “screencast” done by the folk(s) at Ableton Life: an intro to DJing in Live.

If you need help building a Live DJ rig, be sure to check out my article about the subject here.

Part 2 after the jump!

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For the entire month of May, Universal Audio is offering 10% off all of their plugins – including their bundles. You can take your pic from:

• Classic Compressors: Teletronix LA-2A, 1176LN, Fairchild 670, and a VCA VU compressor (based on the dbx 160). Link
• Precision Mastering: Precision Multiband Compressor, Limiter, and EQ. All work on UAD-1 and -2 cards. Link
• EMT Classic Reverb: EMT 140 and 250. Link
• UAD 4K Classic Console: 4K Channel Strip (including E Type EQs and filters) and 4K Buss Compressor. Faithfully modeled after the SSL 4000. Link
• Roland Classic Series FX: BOSS CE-1 (chorus stompbox), Roland Dimension D (chorus/spatial imaging), and Roland RE-201 Space Echo. All work on UAD-1 and -2 cards. Link
• Neve Classic Console: 1073/1073SE EQ, 1081/1081SE EQ, and 33609/33609SE Compressor. Works for UAD-1 and -2 cards. Link
• Neve Classic Console MkII: Includes all plug-ins from MkI, but includes the 88RS Channel Strip. All of MkII works for UAD-1 and -2 cards. Link

A lot of choices for your UAD cards. For further pricing info, please check out UA’s site.

Alesis debuted their newest budget-friendly interface at Musikmesse this year, the IO2 Express is a USB powered interface that will be sold for $99 at your local music retailer.

Some features:

• 24-bit recording
• 48V phantom power
• On both input channels: XLR, 1/4″ TRS, and 1/4″ TS
• Balanced 1/4″ outputs for speakers
• 1/4″ headphone output
• MIDI I/O

The IO2 will be shipped with Cubase LE and is expected to drop during the second quarter of 2010.

RME isn’t as popular in the US as it is in Europe , but the 22-channel Babyface might just change that.

The Babyface offers analog stereo I/O, SPIDF, ADAT, and MIDI I/O. The preamps are digitally controlled and the Babyface ships with TotalMix FX which provides some very common DSP effects – EQ, dynamics, delay, and reverb.

• TotalMix with DSP effects
• 192 kHz AD / DA converters
• Active jitter suppression
• 2 x Analog I/O
• 2 x Mic / Line preamps, digitally controlled
• 1 x Instrument input (alternate)
• 1 x Stereo headphone output
• 1 x ADAT I/O
• 1 x SPDIF I/O (optical instead of ADAT I/O)
• 1 x MIDI I/O
• 1 x USB 2.0

Perhaps the Apogee Duo and One will see some competition? I think so. Check out rme-audio.de for more info.

SPL announced a few things the other day at Musikmesse. Among them:

• RackPack 4: A smaller, more affordable version of their previous RackPack. Four spaces of awesomeness.
• Dual Band De-esser: A RackPack-friendly de-essing unit. It’s main feature is the fact that it reduces sibilance via phase and not compression like most other de-essers. Pricing and availability for both the RackPack 4 and Dual Band De-esser is TBA.
• SPL is also showing off M/S Master, a one-unit rackspace mid/side processor that’s designed to make mid/side routing much easier when it comes to mastering. Just like the above items, the M/S Master has no price or availability info yet.
• And last, but not least, SPL has announced Transpressor. Level independent compression and transient processing is the name of the game. Again, a single rackspace unit that contains all the familiar parameters and features (read: sidechain) that you would expect but on the SPL level. Pricing and availability TBA.

Check out spl.info for more info.